3rd Grade

English Language Arts

Curriculum Essentials

Document

Boulder Valley School District

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

April 2012

Introduction

On December 10, 2009, the Colorado State Board of Education adopted the revised English Language Arts: Reading, Writing and Communicating Academic Standards, along with academic standards in nine other content areas, creating Colorado’s first fully aligned preschool through high school academic expectations.Concurrent to the revision of the Colorado standards was the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative. These standards present a national perspective on academic expectations for students in kindergarten through high school in the United States. On August 2, 2010, the Colorado State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards, and requested the integration of the Common Core State Standards and the Colorado Academic Standards. All the expectations of the Common Core State Standards are embedded and coded with CCSS in the state standards document and in this BVSD Curriculum Essentials Document.

In addition to standards in English Language Arts (ELA), the Common Core State Standards offer literacy expectations for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. These expectations, in grades 6 through grade 12, are intended to assist teachers in “using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their respective fields.” (Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, page 3). These expectations are NOT meant to supplant academic standards in other content areas, but to be used as a literacy supplement. These standards are listed in the Appendix to the Secondary level BVSD Curriculum Essentials Document.

This BVSD Curriculum Essentials Document incorporates all of the Common Core English Language Arts State Standards and the essentials from the Colorado Academic Standards for Reading, Writing and Communicating along with evidence outcomes identified by BVSD teachers. The Grade Level Expectations (GLE) have also been revised as measurable behavioral statements. You will note that the GLEs are similar statements across grade levels. The differences are seen within the Evidence Outcomes listed for each GLE at each grade level. We referenced the multiple resources used to write our BVSD curriculum and used the following notations throughout the CEDs::

Preschool – 12th notations:

  • Common Core State Standards (CCSS: #of the grade level standard)

Example: (CCSS: RL.3.10)

  • State or BVSD Teacher Addition: Brown font

Example: b. Speak clearly, using appropriate volume and pitch, for the purpose and audience.

Preschool Only:

The State standards and the preschool Teaching Strategies GOLD - Objectives for Development & Learning Assessment was referenced in designing Grade Level Expectations and Evidence Outcomes. You will note parenthetical statements such as (adapted from G.12.a.6) if the GOLD Assessment was used. The G represents GOLD Assessment, 12.a represents the objective number and the 6 represents the student behavior indicator.

This curriculum document is a culmination of an extended, broad-based effort to fulfill the charge issued by the Colorado Department of Education to design a curriculum that meets or exceeds the state standard expectations and to ensure that all students are college and career ready in English Language Arts when they graduate from BVSD. The Boulder Valley English Language Arts: Reading, Writing, and Communicating Curriculum Council would like to thank the many teachers, specialists, and assistants who were contributing writers to this important document.

21st Century Skills and Readiness Competencies

in English Language Arts: Reading, Writing, and Communicating

The reading, writing, and communicating subcommittee embedded 21st century skills, school readiness, and postsecondary and workforce readiness skills into the revised standards utilizing descriptions developed by Coloradans and vetted by educators, policymakers, and citizens.

Colorado's Description of21st Century Skills

The 21st century skills are the synthesis of the essential abilities students must apply in our rapidly changing world. Today’s students need a repertoire of knowledge and skills that are more diverse, complex, and integrated than any previous generation. Drama and theatre arts are inherently demonstrated in each of Colorado’s 21stcentury skills, as follows:

Critical Thinking and Reasoning

Critical thinking and reasoning are vital to advance in the technologically sophisticated world we live in. In order for students to be successful and powerful readers, writers, and communicators, they must incorporate critical thinking and reasoning skills. Students need to be able to successfully argue a point, justify reasoning, evaluate for a purpose, infer to predict and draw conclusions, problem solve, and understand and use logic to inform critical thinking.

Information Literacy

The student who is information-literate accesses information efficiently and effectively by reading and understanding essential content of a range of informational texts and documents in all academic areas. This involves evaluating information critically and competently; accessing appropriate tools to synthesize information; recognizing relevant primary and secondary information; and distinguishing among fact, point of view, and opinion.

Collaboration

Reading, writing, and communicating must encompass collaboration skills. Students should be able to collaborate with each other in multiple settings: peer groups, one-on-one, in front of an audience, in large and small group settings, and with people of other ethnicities. Students should be able to participate in a peer review, foster a safe environment for discourse, mediate opposing perspectives, contribute ideas, speak with a purpose, understand and apply knowledge of culture, and seek others’ ideas.

Self-Direction

Students who read, write, and communicate independently portray self-direction by using metacognition skills. These important skills are a learner’s automatic awareness of knowledge and ability to understand, control, and manipulate cognitive processes. These skills are important not only in school but throughout life, enabling the student to learn and set goals independently.

Invention

Appling new ways to solve problems is an ideal in reading and writing instruction. Invention is one of the key components of creating an exemplary writing piece or synthesizing information from multiple sources. Invention takes students to a higher level of metacognition while exploring literature and writing about their experiences.

Standards in English Language Arts: Reading, Writing, and Communicating

Standards are the topical organization of an academic content area. The four standards of English Language Arts: Reading, Writing, and Communicating are:

1.Speaking and Listening

Learning of word meanings occurs rapidly from birth through adolescence within communicative relationships. Everyday interactions with parents, teachers, peers, friends, and community members shape speech habits and knowledge of language. Language is the means to higher mental functioning, that which is a species-specific skill, unique to humans as a generative means for thinking and communication. Through linguistic oral communication, logical thinking develops and makes possible critical thinking, reasoning, development of information literacy, application of collaboration skills, self-direction, and invention.

Oral language foundation and written symbol systems concretize the way a student communicates. Thus, students in Colorado develop oral language skills in listening and speaking, and master the written language skills of reading and writing. Specifically, holding Colorado students accountable for language mastery from the perspectives of scientific research in linguistics, cognitive psychology, human information processing, brain-behavior relationships, and socio-cultural perspectives on language development will allow students to master 21st century skills and serve the state, region, and nation well.

2.Reading for All Purposes

Literacy skills are essential for students to fully participate in and expand their understanding of today’s global society. Whether they are reading functional texts (voting ballots, a map, a train schedule, a driver’s test, a job application, a text message, product labels); reference materials (textbooks, technical manuals, electronic media); or print and non-print literary texts, students need reading skills to fully manage, evaluate, and use the myriad information available in their day-to-day lives.

3.Writing and Composition

Writing is a fundamental component of literacy. Writing is a means of critical inquiry; it promotes problem solving and mastering new concepts. Adept writers can work through various ideas while producing informational, persuasive, and narrative or literary texts. In other words, writing can be used as a medium for reasoning and making intellectual connections. As students arrange ideas to persuade, describe, and inform, they engage in logical critique, and they are likely to gain new insights and a deeper understanding of concepts and content.

4.Research and Reasoning

Research and Reasoning skills are pertinent for success in a postsecondary and workforce setting. Students need to acquire these skills throughout their schooling. This means students need to be able to distinguish their own ideas from information created or discovered by others, understand the importance of creating authentic works, and correctly cite sources to give credit to the author of the original work.

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects include a separate standard for Language. In this document, those Language expectations are integrated into the four standards above as appropriate.

3rd Grade Overview

Course Description
English Language Arts in Third Grade focuses on developing motivated, strategic, constructive, fluent and independent readers, writers, and communicators. The emphasis is on extending oral language abilities and the use of reading and writing processes. Students will read literature and informational texts. They will express thinking and support opinions using textual evidence both orally and in writing. Students will also use research skills and tools to gather, organize, summarize and share information. / Topics Across All Grades
We are developing learners who:
  • Demonstrate independence
  • Build strong content knowledge
  • Respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline
  • Comprehend as well as critique
  • Value evidence
  • Use technology and digital media strategically and capably
  • Come to understand other perspectives and cultures
Who value:
Critical thinking and reasoning, informational literacy, collaboration, self-direction and invention
Assessments
Screeners, diagnostics, interim and summative assessments will be used along with assessments evaluated formatively to plan lessons and provide focused feedback to students. Below are some assessment examples.
  • Observations/Conversations/Work Samples
  • Group/Individual Projects - Performance tasks
  • District/State Literacy Assessment
  • Individual Reading Inventories such as Running Records, QRIs, Guided Reading Level Benchmark Books
  • Questions/Comments/Reading Responses
  • Peer assessments/ Self assessments
/ Effective Components of English Language Arts
Teachers in BVSD:
  1. Provide a literacy block of 120 minutes for reading and writing every day using literature and informational texts, including online resources
  1. Evaluate data formatively to plan for:
  2. Reading & Writing Demonstrations
  3. Shared Reading & Writing
  4. Guided Reading & Writing
  5. Flexible grouping focused on needs
  6. Continuous text: both reading and writing
  7. Promote reciprocity between reading and writing through deliberate attention to both
  8. Daily independent reading and writing
  1. Immerse students in many types of texts (examples: songs, picture books, rhyming, informational) at independent and instructional reading levels
  1. Explicitly and systematically teach foundational and essential skills and strategies for reading and writing utilizing BVSD adopted resources and online resources
  1. Provide authentic, meaningful, purposeful, relevant opportunities for students to respond to what is read
  1. Ensure students use textual evidence when explaining their learning from reading and writing in all content areas
  1. Ensure additional small group instructional time for students not performing at grade level
Refer to the online version of the BVSD handbook, Literacy Journey, for best practices guidance
Grade Level Expectations
Standards / Big Ideas for Third Grade
Grade Level Expectations
1. Speaking and Listening / 1. / Communicate effectively while reporting on a topic, telling a story, or recounting an experience.
2. / Prepare for and engages effectively in collaborative discussions.
2. Reading for All Purposes / 1. / Use a range of strategies efficiently to construct meaning while reading literature.
2. / Use a range of strategies efficiently to construct meaning while reading informational texts.
3. / Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills to decode words.
4. / Read fluently with varied expression and sufficient accuracy to support comprehension.
5. / Use a range of vocabulary learning strategies to acquire and use grade-appropriate words and phrases.
3. Writing and Composition / 1. / Use the recursive writing process to create narratives and poems for intended audiences and purposes.
2. / Use the recursive writing process to create informative/explanatory and opinion pieces for a variety of audiences and purposes.
3. / Applyconventions of standard English grammar and usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling consistently.
4. Research and Reasoning / 1. / Conduct and shares research by taking notes and sorting evidence into categories.

4/9/2012BVSD Curriculum Essentials1

  1. Speaking and Listening: Flexible communication and collaboration

Including but not limited to skills necessary for formal presentations, the Speaking and Listening standard requires students to develop a range of broadly useful oral communication and interpersonal skills. Students must learn to work together, express and listen carefully to ideas, integrate information from oral, visual, quantitative, and media sources, evaluate what they hear, use media and visual displays strategically to help achieve communicative purposes, and adapt speech to context and task.

Common Core Anchor Standards

These are the Common Core Preschool through grade 12College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening. These anchor standards and grade-specific standards are necessary complements—the former providing broad standards, the latter providing additional specificity—that together define the skills and understandings that all students must demonstrate.

SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
LANGUAGE Anchor Standards Connected to Speaking and Listening*
Conventions of Standard English
1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
Knowledge of Language
3. Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
6. Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when encountering an unknown term important to comprehension or expression.
*Numbers correspond to the six Common Core Language Anchor Standards. Listed here are the ones that connect to Speaking and Listening.

Colorado’s Prepared Graduate Competencies

These are the Preschool through grade 12 concepts and skills that all students who complete the Colorado education system must master to ensure their success in a postsecondary and workforce setting.

Prepared Graduate Competencies in the Speaking and Listening Standard:
Collaborate effectively as group members or leaders who listen actively and respectfully pose thoughtful questions, acknowledge the ideas of others, and contribute ideas to further the group’s attainment of an objective
Deliver organized and effective oral presentations for diverse audiences and varied purposes
Use language appropriate for purpose and audience
Demonstrate skill in inferential and evaluative listening
Content Area: English Language Arts – Third Grade
Standard: 1. Speaking and Listening
Prepared Graduates:
Use language appropriate for purpose and audience
GRADE LEVEL EXPECTATION
Concepts and skills students master:
  1. Communicate effectively while reporting on a topic, telling a story, or recounting an experience.

Evidence Outcomes / 21st Century Skills and Readiness Competencies
Students can:
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
b.Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience, with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace. (CCSS: SL.3.4)
c.Distinguish different levels of formality.
d.Speak clearly, using appropriate volume and pitch, for the purpose and audience.
e.Select and organize ideas sequentially, or around major points of information, that relate to the formality of the audience.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
f.Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays, when appropriate, to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details. (CCSS: SL.3.5)
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
g.Speak in complete sentences, when appropriate, to tasks and situations, in order to provide requested detail or clarification. (CCSS: SL.3.6)
Knowledge of Language
h.Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening. (CCSS: L.3.3)
i.Choose words and phrases for effect. (CCSS: L.3.3a)
ii.Recognize and observe differences between the conventions of spoken and written Standard English. (CCSS: L.3.3b)
iii.Use grammatically correct language for the audience and specific vocabulary to communicate ideas and supporting details. / Inquiry Questions:
  1. Why is it important to speak clearly with appropriate volume and pitch?
  2. How can discussion increase our knowledge and understanding of an idea(s)?
  3. How do speakers express their thoughts and feelings?
  4. How does a speaker communicate so others will listen and understand the message?

Relevance and Application:
  1. Throughout life, participation in group discussions around a topic of interest occurs frequently.
  2. Presenters must peak at a rate and volume others can understand to ensure they have communicated their message.
  3. Effective communications skills are needed in public relations and performance careers: Television reporters demonstrate expertise in clearly presenting to an audience; Actors in a group scene must communicate the appropriate thoughts and feelings for the audience to understand their intent.
  4. Electronic tools visual mapping tools can be used to organize ideas.

Nature of the Discipline:
1.Good communicators make changes to their presentations based on the interests of their audiences.
2.Discussion helps to build connections with/to others and create opportunities for learning.
3.A speaker’s choice of words and style set a tone and define the message.
4.A speaker selects a form and organizational pattern based on the audience and purpose.
Content Area: English Language Arts – Third Grade
Standard: 1. Speaking and Listening
Prepared Graduates:
Collaborate effectively as group members or leaders who listen actively and respectfully pose thoughtful questions, acknowledge the ideas of others, and contribute ideas to further the group's attainment of an objective
Demonstrate skill in inferential and evaluative listening
GRADE LEVEL EXPECTATION
Concepts and skills students master:
2.Prepare for and engages effectively in collaborative discussions.
Evidence Outcomes / 21st Century Skills and Readiness Competencies
Students can:
Comprehension and Collaboration
  1. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing own ideas clearly. (CCSS: SL 3.1)
i.Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion. (CCSS: SL.3.1a)
ii.Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion). (CCSS: SL.3.1b)
iii.Ask questions to check understanding of information presented, stay on topic, and link comments to the remarks of others. (CCSS: SL.3.1c)
iv.Explain own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion. (CCSS: SL.3.1d)
v.Use eye contact, volume, and tone appropriate to audience and purpose.
vi.Use different types of complete sentences to share information, give directions, or request information.
Comprehension and Collaboration
  1. Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. (CCSS: SL 3.2)
Comprehension and Collaboration
  1. Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail. (CCSS: SL 3.3)
/ Inquiry Questions:
  1. What are the different kinds of roles people have when working in a group?
  2. When is it appropriate to ask questions?
  3. Why is it important to use precise vocabulary in communication?
  4. Do children talk differently to their friends than to their teachers? Why?

Relevance and Application:
  1. Effective communicators are able to express their thoughts and listen to the ideas of others.
  2. Interacting with others by sharing knowledge, stories, and interests builds positive relationships.
  3. Digital tools can be used to enhance communication and collaboration.

Nature of the Discipline:
1.Listening and speaking skills are used to collaborate with a group for a presentation, such as a book report or dramatic reading.
2.Effective listeners are able to interpret and evaluate increasingly complex messages.

4/9/2012BVSD Curriculum Essentials1